Top 5 Mistakes RTOs Make

Welcome to the RTO Superhero podcast with me Angela Connell Richards. Each week we break down the standards for RTO's 2025 and turn them into clear actions you can use. You get real examples, compliance tips and straight answers for running a quality RTO. Let's get started. In this episode I'm going to cover the top five mistakes that RTOs make. So in a snapshot they are hiring the wrong trainers and assessors. Assessment tools do not meet the industry's student needs. Not clear on their plan for training and assessment. Don't know how to stay compliant all the time and having compliant policies and procedures that reflect the regulatory legislation. So these five areas of what we've identified is some of the biggest areas of non-compliance when you go to an ask or order. So what do I mean by hiring the wrong trainers and assessors? Often RTOs do not have trainers with sufficient skills and knowledge to deliver the training, including currency within their industry of what they should be delivering. So what I'm going to go through today is how what are the three main reasons where RTOs go wrong and how to choose the right trainers. Ask wherever identified that there are number one non-compliance at audit is the training and assessment tools and in particular that they're not meeting industry and student needs. So what I'll be going through is what are the top three non-compliance with their assessment tools and what you can do to improve those assessment tools. Not having and being clear on your plan for your training and assessment. Your training and assessment strategy is the most important document for your organisation. It sets the benchmark on how your organisation delivers their training and assessment based on your feedback. Discover the key requirements of your task and how to write a tool that is not only compliant but will provide a guide to your trainers and industry on how you deliver and assess. Staying compliant all the time. How do you get that culture of compliance within your organisation? The key to being compliant is to collect, analyse and act on the relevant feedback. Most RTOs collect but they don't act on the feedback. So it's really important if we are collecting feedback that we are improving our practices based on that feedback. Compliant policies and procedures that reflect the regulatory legislation. The sector is renowned for continuous changes in legislation and the standards and we're going through massive change right now with the VET reform, which makes it hard to keep up to date with the requirements. Most RTOs do not have sufficient resources to manage their policies and procedures. So I'm going to go through some simple steps on how to keep up to date with the constant changes of legislation. So let's start with trainers and assessors. So having a suitably qualified and experienced trainer and assessor not only helps you get through the audit process it also ensures that you are delivering training and assessment that will meet the student and industry needs. In order to ensure that your trainer is suitably qualified, you need to ensure that your trainers hold the qualification that they are to teach. For example, if your trainer is going to deliver and assess the Diploma of Leadership Management, they should either hold the Diploma of Leadership Management or a higher qualification and be able to demonstrate that they have experience equivalent to every area that they're going to deliver. Trainers will also be required to hold a certificate for in training and assessment. This is a specialised qualification for the VET sector where all trainers and assessors are required to hold this qualification before they can deliver an assess in an RTO. Most importantly, your trainer should have a minimum of three years industry experience and this should be relevant to the units that they are delivering within the training product. For example, if they were to deliver a childcare unit, provide care for babies and toddlers, they should have a minimum of three years industry experience in caring for babies. And that is not just looking after their own children. This is being employed within a regulated childcare facility and actually states that in the training product. The more experienced your trainer has, the more you and your students will benefit from that experience within the RTO. This experience should also be current gained within the last three years, which means that they should have worked within the industry over the last three years, not over ten years ago. This is to ensure that their skills and knowledge are current with the current standards and work practices for that industry. The best trainers also have a passion for their industry. They love what they do. Now, I do not mean a passion for training, although this does help. I mean a passion for the industry that they are delivering their training in. If your trainer loves their industry and a passionate about the quality of the skills that staff should have, within their industry, they will be outstanding trainers who will create raven clients for you. That means your students will tell all their friends and family that they should go to your RTO for training as they have the best trainers. Okay, let's move along. Assessment tools do not meet industry needs. So the most common mistake that RTOs make is they do not have sufficient training and assessment tools to meet the learner cohort needs. Asquire have identified that every year, assessment tools are the most non-compliant at all. For both initial registration and re-registration, where RTOs go wrong with assessment tools is they do not ensure that the tools will meet their target audience needs. If you have identified that your target audience will be or are recent school learners or leaders, your school tools should include assessment activities that would be suitable for students who have little to no understanding of that industry. And they should also include assessments that can be conducted in the classroom or at work experience. You cannot expect a recent school lever to have access to documentation that they would only normally access within the workplace within that specific industry. Another common mistake is that RTOs think that it would be cheaper for them to develop their own tools. For me, I always advise Y-Waste Time and Money reinventing the wheel when someone else has already done all the hard work for you. There are many good, also bad, but that is another ebook. Publishers out there who have experience in the industry as well as conducted extensive research into the development of their training and assessment tools. We always recommend our clients purchase your assessment tools, who purchase their assessment tools. You can always contextualise the tools down the track when you have gained more experience. Most people do not know that in order for an assessment tool to be compliant, it must meet what is called in the industry training package requirements. What makes our industry so awesome is we have an industry standard that outlines the performance criteria required to be assessed in each unit. The training package outlines these performance criteria as well as the assessment criteria of how you should assess the student. In order to ensure that your assessment tools are compliant, the standard state that you must check or validate these tools against the training package requirements, both before you start using the tool and after you have commenced using the tool. You're also required to have a clear process to ensure that you are validating on a regular basis. Number three, not being clear on their plan for training and assessment. Your training and assessment strategy is the most important document for your RTO as it is a map to how you deliver and assess your qualifications or course. Without this map, you will not have consistency within your RTO and it will be unclear to your trainers how you want the qualification or course to be delivered. The best way to ensure that your strategy truly reflects your industry requirements is to consult with your industry. This doesn't mean that you send out a couple of surveys and present them at audit. You really need to engage with your industry, engaging with your industry, including, includes attending meetings with potential employers or managers, asking them what are your biggest challenges when hiring staff? What are their wants and needs? What do they expect graduates from your RTO to have gained when they walk out of your RTO? Successful RTOs get industry involved with their course development. They survey them, meet with them, work with them, get involved with their industry on their level. And really I do. identify what are their needs and how we can address them. In order to write the best plan for your training and assessment, you really need to drill down to who are your target audience. What are their existing skills and knowledge? The way I like to describe it is to me, to my newbie clients, is imagine that you are looking into a crystal ball and think about who will be in your first class. What is their cultural and educational background? How old are the typical students? What existing skills and qualifications and experience do they currently have? Your training should then be contextualised to meet the needs of those students. The better you identify your target audience, the better prepared you will be for the delivery of training. In 2012, the Standards for Artios changed to incorporate volume of learning, which is an area where a lot of artios are non-compliant. It's really getting that balance between volume of learning and amount of training and how are you meeting those needs within your training. It's looking at the different levels of the students that you have within your training, including might be new entrants and existing workers, and ensuring that your training delivery includes sufficient time for students to put the skills and knowledge that they have learnt into place on a number of occasions. So it's giving them the opportunity to practice those skills many times before they actually go into the assessment. The best comparison for your training and assessment strategy is to address it like a business plan on how you deliver, you want to plan to deliver your training. When you write a business plan, you learn so much about your business, your research, your competition, you identify your strengths and weaknesses, you work out what your clients want and how to meet industry needs. Your training and assessment strategy is the same process, learning about how you can meet your client needs and deliver training and assessment that is right fit for your industry and your students. Number four, staying compliant all the time. One of the things that we have identified is that a lot of RTOs struggle with managing the balance between compliance and business success and making sure that they're not one or the other is falling behind. On going compliance seems like a hard task but it is really easy. You just have to be disciplined to ensure that the RTO has a culture of compliance. It needs to be part of the culture within your team. The best way to ensure this is to have a clear process on how your team should maintain their compliance. This includes collecting feedback from industry and students regularly at least once a month. Reviewing that feedback and then acting on the feedback to ensure that you are addressing your industry and student needs. Adjusting your training and assessments in line with the feedback. Continuous improvement cycle for ensuring that your policies and procedures are reviewed on a regular basis throughout the year. Hold regular meetings to discuss and monitor the feedback and return action to be taken to implement the change based on that feedback. There are a variety of ways that you can collect evidence of compliance. These can be through surveys to students and industry but it can also be through your formal complaints and appeals process or an opportunity for improvement process for staff, students, employers to provide feedback on how to improve your practices. A continuous improvement cycle is also a very good strategy for scheduling when you will review your policies and procedures and documentation to ensure they are relevant and current and put into practice throughout your RTO. Most RTOs consult with industry and students regularly but they do not have a formal process for documenting that feedback. Continuing regular meetings and taking minutes of those meetings will provide you with a process for formalising your informal consultation and will provide a mechanism for the feedback to be shared within your team. Number five, compliant policies and procedures that reflect the regulatory requirements. One thing that we can be guaranteed of with government is legislation is constantly changing, which means that in order to be compliant you have to ensure that your policies and procedures are regularly updated to meet legislative requirements. Most RTOs either do not update their policies and procedures as the legislation changes or they do not have sufficient policies and procedures in the first place. The best way to ensure that you are kept up to date with the latest requirements is to network and hire a compliance manager. Someone who has years of experience in compliance, not only understanding the legislation but also how to implement compliance within your RTO. If you are unable to hire a compliance manager or you want to learn how to manage your own compliance, you should hire compliance experts such as vivacity, contracting people who have years of experience in compliance, who have kept up to date with the latest legislative requirements and done all the hard work for you. Once again, why reinvent the wheel when someone has done all the hard work for you? Once you have these policies and procedures in place, you need to ensure that they are implemented. I have heard complaints from many ASCRA auditors about their concerns that RTOs are hiring consultants to get them compliant with either no intention to implement or have not bothered to implement the policies and procedures within the RTO. It is one thing to have policies and procedures and quite another to have them implemented within your RTO. It is really important to ensure that you have a continuous improvement approach to ensuring that your RTO has policies and procedures that truly reflect what you do and a mechanism in place to review your policies and procedures. As checking, does this policy and procedure document have a process that we actually do, do we actually implement this? If they do not document, what do they do? Do we need to change our policy and procedure or do we need to change our practice? Thank you very much for listening to this episode about the five critical five mistakes RTOs make. We also have an e-book on this same topic and we also have a number of training that you may be interested in around those mistakes or RTOs, make and how you can improve those. This is exactly what we do in our membership program where we help coach our clients not only in compliance but that balance between compliance and business success. Thank you very much for listening. I look forward to catching you soon. Thanks for joining me on the RTO Superhero podcast. Use today's insights to strengthen your systems and lift the quality of your delivery. Subscribe, share the episode and keep building a strong and accountable RTO. See you next time. Thank you very much. We will be back in the next week. Thank you very much. Thank you.